Obsolete electronics or E-waste has observed significant escalation in the recent years. Young adults, in particular, are one of the largest consumers of electronic equipments in the contemporary world, although research on their perceptions, awareness and disposal behavior of E-waste has been far and few in between. Considering the growth trajectory of E-waste in the emerging economies, a study has been carried out in the capital city of India, New Delhi with 1039 respondents in the age group of 18–22. Contemplating its aggressive generation, obsolete mobile phone was considered as a representative of E-waste. Both purchase and disposal behaviors of mobile phones were evaluated through the lens of theoretical frameworks such as conspicuous consumption and throwaway society. The concepts of planned and premature obsolescence were also explored. A structured questionnaire survey was carried out through a respondent driven snowball sampling method. We observed that the functional need is the foremost consideration while deciding to purchase a new mobile phone within our study sample. Over 49% of our respondents change their mobile phones between 1 and 3 years. This corresponds to the fact that mobile phones are discarded very much within their actual functional lifespan. Overall, it could be concluded that the major attributes of conspicuous consumption and a throwaway society are still not dominant in our study sample. The experiences of India’s E-waste have the potential to provide important insights for policy formulation and sustainable management particularly in other emerging economies and developing countries.

Companies and related consumer behaviours contribute significantly to global carbon emissions. However, consumer behaviour is shifting, with the public now recognising the real and immediate impact of climate change. Many companies are aware and seemingly eager to align to consumer’s increasing environmental consciousness, yet there is a risk that some companies could be presenting themselves as environmentally friendly without implementing environmentally beneficial processes and products (i.e. greenwashing). Here, using longitudinal climate leadership, environmental messaging (Twitter) and stock price data, we explore how climate leadership (a relative climate change mitigation metric) and environmental messaging have changed for hundreds of UK companies. Using the environmental messaging, we also assess whether companies are simply greenwashing their true climate change performance. Finally, we explore how climate leadership and environmental messaging influence companies’ stock prices. We found that companies (on average) have increased their climate leadership (coef: 0.14, CI 0.12–0.16) and environmental messaging (coef: 0.35, CI 0.19–0.50) between 2010 and 2019. We also found an association where companies with more environmental messaging had a higher climate leadership (coef: 0.16, CI 0.07–0.26), suggesting messaging was proportionate to environmental performance, and so there was no clear pattern of using Twitter for greenwashing across UK companies. In fact, some companies may be under-advertising their pro-environmental performance. Finally, we found no evidence that climate leadership, environmental messaging or greenwashing impacts a company’s stock price.

The effect of ecological distortions and climate change issues have been at the forefront of the minds of policymakers and energy practitioners in recent decades. This concern is associated with the vision of the seventh and thirteenth Sustainable Development Goals that are centered on access to clean energy sources and mitigating climate change issues, as detailed in Vision 2030. To this end, the present study uses Pesaran’s Pooled Mean Group Auto Regressive Distributed Lag model to investigate the determinants of clean/non-conventional energy in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa. The empirical results show that a 1% increase in economic activity increases the level of renewable energy consumption by 0.128% in the short run. In the long-run, economic growth dampens the consumption of renewable energy by 0.402% over the investigated period. The reason for this peculiar result for the Sub-Saharan African economies could be attributed to the prevalent demand for conventional energy sources and the cost-related factor associated with clean energy technologies even when the economy (herein measured by Gross Domestic Product) is improving. Furthermore, the effect of energy (electricity from fossil fuel) also shows a statistically significant impact when trying to reduce the clean energy consumption. This arises from an expected trade-off effect. Regarding the causality analysis using the heterogeneous panel, the causality results present a one-way causality running from economic growth to renewable energy consumption. We also found there to be a feedback causality relationship between urbanization and renewable energy as well as agricultural value added and economic growth. Based on these findings, several policy decisions were prescribed for Sub-Saharan African economies such as the diversification of Sub-Saharan African economies energy to more renewable energy sources and the adoption of clean energy technologies that are reputed to be cleaner and environmentally friendly.

In this paper, we propose a stochastic joint investment problem to determine the number of photovoltaic (PV) panels and battery storage (BS) units required to satisfy the demand of all the consumers who share a common building. The objective of the proposed problem is to minimize the joint investment cost plus the expected annual energy consumption costs for all consumers over the investment horizon. The problem is also applicable for consumers who have shiftable loads. The proposed problem allocates the random harvested energy and stored energy to the consumers on any operating day in the investment horizon proportional to their investments. This is accomplished by distributing the PV panels and BS units to the consumers as virtual resources in proportion to their contributions towards the total investment cost. The proposed problem facilitates peer-peer energy trading and two-way energy trading with the grid operator. The results reveal that the cost savings under the proposed problem were

Unsurprisingly, many studies consider CO₂ emissions to capture the environment quality needed for testing the augmented environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. However, this is a major limitation of the existing literature because CO₂ alone cannot account for environmental pollution. By employing a more comprehensive proxy ecological footprint, this study aims to examine EKC in G20 economies during 1991–2016. To achieve the objective, a second-generation panel data model was implemented, which accounted for the heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The findings reveal that environmental degradation has an inverted N-shaped linkage with economic growth in the selected countries. It is further observed that globalization, renewable energy consumption, and urbanization improve the environmental quality, whereas non-renewable energy consumption mitigates the quality of environment in G20 countries. With these conclusions, it is suggested that policymakers from these countries should emphasize on more renewable energy usage.

Urban green spaces (UGS) enhance the quality of life in urban environments and serve as habitat corridors or refuge for organisms, including beetles and spiders. The attributes of UGS allow them to harbour species that offer essential ecosystem services. However, the ability of UGS to provide services is limited by the extent to which they have been altered anthropogenically. We described the taxonomic richness and functional composition of arthropods in a mountainous urban ecosystem of Ghana by focussing on the activity of both beetles and spiders at the family level. Two main land-use types (woodlands and built-up areas) were identified and characterised based on the presence or absence of certain vegetation attributes. Sixteen plots in each land-use type with sizes 20 × 20 m were demarcated and fitted with four pitfall traps in each plot to sample continuously for eight weeks, the activity density of both beetles and spiders. Samples were sorted into families and functional groups (detritivores, fungivores, herbivores and predators). The taxonomic richness and activity density were both significantly higher in the woodlands than in the built-up areas. Similarly, all functional groups showed a higher affinity to the woodlands than the built-up areas. Habitat attributes defined by plant diversity and structural complexity were the underlying drivers explaining the differences in arthropod communities between the land-use types. Though the built-up areas seem degraded and open, the remaining small vegetation patches still support the activities of some taxa that should merit the protection of such remnant vegetation in urban ecosystems.

This research aims to test the suitability of a blend of Camelina sativa biodiesel and acetylated diethyl ether as fuel for compression ignition (CI) engines in terms of engine emission, performance, and combustion properties. A Kiloskar TV 1 diesel engine was used to test the fuel samples: Camelina sativa biodiesel (71% v/v) and dimethyl ether blend (29% v/v) (CD), Camelina sativa biodiesel (71% v/v), diethyl ether (20% v/v), and acetylene (9% v/v) (CDA), and conventional diesel. Based on the analyses, the CDA and CD gave higher BTEs of 4.8 and 3.7% than the diesel fuels. The heat release rates (HRRs) were higher than those recorded for the conventional diesel with a longer combustion duration for the blends. Moreover, the CDA fuel gave the lowest CO₂, HC, CO, smoke, and NOx emissions. The resulting peak emissions for the blends are in the following increasing order: unburnt HC (CDA (97) < CD (105) < Diesel (110) < CB (111 g/kWh), NOx (CDA (176) < CD (208) < CB (392) < Diesel (500) g/kWh), and CO (CDA (284) < CD (301) <  CB (520) < Diesel (541) g/kWh. The remarkable performance of the CDA fuel is due to the synergistic effect of the DEE acetylene in the biodiesel, which culminated in improved heat ratios, engine stability, air excess coefficient (lambda (λ) as well as moderate vibrations and noise.